Earlier this month, a call for a parliamentary debate on the death penalty topped the government's new e-petition initiative, and polls indicate that over 50% of Britons favour its restoration. The recent violence in a number of English cities may have pushed that figure higher. As an Anglican priest, my first thought was that the Church of England would be solidly against any restoration of capital punishment. As a historian of the church, however, I had to admit that my own church – and indeed almost every other tradition of Christianity – has a shameful record on this profound moral issue.

Throughout the vast majority of the history of Christianity, capital punishment has been widely endorsed. Christian thinkers as diverse as St Paul, Aquinas and Calvin can be enlisted in its defence. Article 37 of the 39 Articles of the Church of England (1563), to which all ordained ministers of the established church assent, states that "the Laws of the Realm may punish Christian men with death, for heinous and grievous offences". Anglicans were not alone. In 1566 the Council of Trent of the Roman Catholic Church reaffirmed the morality of the death penalty: "The just use of this power [capital punishment], far from involving the crime of murder, is an act of paramount obedience to [the Fifth] Commandment which prohibits murder".

On this issue at least there was consensus between Europe's mega-churches, drawing on the weight of Christian tradition and teaching but also partly fuelled by shared hostility towards Christian radicals with their wacky (or do I mean "biblical"?) beliefs in pacifism, holding all things in common, and a rejection of capital punishment – positions condemned by all the mainstream churches. Looking back, it is a pretty uncomfortable example of ecumenical convergence.

In Britain, nonconformist Christians led the charge on abolition. But even the bishops of the established church could be converted. In 1948 only one bishop, George Bell of Chichester, clearly supported abolition in the Lords; in 1956 eight voted for abolition, one against. By 1969, 19 bishops voted for and one against. The bishops were being remarkably "counter-cultural" as polls indicated that 85% of the public favoured the retention of hanging in 1969. The distinguished historian Hugh McLeod has suggested that the move in the 20th century away from a theology of salvation based on seeing the cross as punishment for sin, to an incarnational emphasis on God becoming human in Christ, strengthened the view that all human life was sacred and helped to move the episcopal bench on the issue. McLeod also maintained that Christians who consider all parts of the Bible "equally authoritative" and promote a literalist approach support the death penalty more strongly.

Reflection on the church's transformed teaching on the death penalty raises challenges for Christians on how we relate tradition and biblical authority to other current controversies, such as the ordination of women and human sexuality. Moving at the pace of the slowest, much commended in my own church, is not morally neutral. Should those favouring the restoration of the death penalty get their parliamentary debate, my hope is that the Church of England will speak against it with all the authority of a reformed sinner.